Brotherhood Saga 03: Death (98 page)

Then again, who was he to think that he
had
to speak, much less contribute to the dining-table dialogue of which was common with most groups of people? He wasn’t required to relay anything about his past, about his adventures, his trials and errors and, ultimately, his triumphs, and while it seemed that most if not all the attention was set toward him, that didn’t mean he had to say anything.

When Katarina
’s vision strayed from her husband and fell directly on him, Odin couldn’t help but sigh.

Beneath the table, Virgin reached over and set his hand over Odin
’s knuckles.
It’s all right,
that touch seemed to say.
You have absolutely nothing to worry about.

“So,” Carmen said, pushing herself to her feet in order to have a better look around the table. “Odin…”

“Yes?” he asked, surprised at the fact his voice was so clear.

“I
’ve noticed you been a little quiet.”

Yes
,
he thought.

“So I
’m wondering,” Carmen continued, plucking a piece of meat from her plate and sliding it into her mouth. “I mean, if it’s all right to ask and all.”

“Go ahead.”

“How did your meeting with the king go?”

Fine,
he wanted to say, grimacing at how the tone of his word rang through his head and made dandelions weep in a field full of marvelous flowers.
It was just like the good old days, Carmen, when I could talk to the man I considered a third father without ever thinking that I was considered less.

So badly he wanted to say that his king truly was as he was called—kind, considerate, with a heart and mind of gold that sang of bluebirds on a warm summer
’s day and drew even the feistiest of cardinals from their roosts. He wanted to say that even from the very beginning, his king had gone out of his way to do everything to make his life better—that in the morning, after a long night’s sleep, he would sing old tales of war and triumph in a bathtub fresh with water and offer a conscience upon which to relate all his fears, would propose to read him poetry and discuss with him the practical means of its symbolism, would take his swords in his hands and polish the metal with special oils until they shined like grand jewels upon the crown this king never wore. He could not lie when he said that the king had taken him in—had fed, clothed, trained and eventually shaped him into the man he was today—so to think that now, after all this time, a change had come in their relationship was almost impossible to fathom, as it had always seemed that Ournul would accept him no matter whom he loved or what he did.

He
’s changed,
Odin thought, his eyes falling to the food and hands curling into fists beneath the table.
He’s changed, Odin, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Could he, if he truly wanted, rebel against his kin
g’s wishes, and walk the streets hand-in-hand and kiss Virgin in public? It would be one false way to make a point, propose a declaration and say, ‘This is who I truly am,’ but would that be considered a crime against his kingdom, a wound upon which the country would suffer? If so, it was completely understandable that Ournul would not want such a thing to happen, but in that moment, when his jaw was so firmly clamped that he thought his teeth would break, he couldn’t help but wonder whether his king’s words were meant for the good of the kingdom and not just simple prejudice against something he didn’t understand.

When he turned his head up and offered a frown to Carmen
, he watched the Dwarf’s face contort into a mixture of pain and unsurety and couldn’t help but sigh.

“Oh,” she said.

“He didn’t approve of me and Virgin’s relationship,” Odin said, desperate to fight the tears brimming at the corners of his eyes away by lacing his and Virgin’s fingers together.

Nova
’s fork dropped to his plate.

Odin turned his eyes up.

Flames of hate burned within the amber pools of Nova’s eyes. “You’re joking,” the man said. “You have to be fucking kidding me.”

“Nova,” Katarina whispered.

“No, honey. This is absolutely ridiculous!”

“I can understand his meaning, Nova, but—“

“But
what?”

“Please le
t me finish,” she sighed, reaching up to brush her hair from her face and taking a long, deep breath. She laced her fingers together and waited for Nova to respond before turning her eyes on Odin. “The king is only concerned for your wellbeing, Odin. You know that.”

“I know.”

“It’s wrong, what he’s doing to you. I know it is because I’ve read the stories, the tales where young men fell in love with each other and died because of it. It’s wrong, because in our day and age, we should be smart enough to know that two men or two women loving each other doesn’t hurt
anything.
But you know what? Some people are so ignorant that they’ll look through something without even bothering to look
at
it and make decisions on it based on that.”

“The prejudice of humanity,” Virgin said.

“Exactly,” Katarina replied. “I know it hurts you, Odin, and I’m sure it hurts you just as well, Virgin, but don’t think I’m taking the enemy’s side because I think it’s right. It’s just… I don’t want to see either of you hurt more than you already are now.”

“She has a point,” Ketrak said, clearing his throat after sipping his water. “It
’s mad to think that people would react so aggressively to seeing two men holding hands, but I’ve seen it happen and it hasn’t been a pretty thing.”

“It
’s bullshit,” Nova growled.

“It
’s not right,” Carmen nodded, “but your wife has a point, honey. It’s better for Odin and Virgin to keep their relationship private, no matter how much it hurts us.”

“Maybe you
’ll blaze a new path for future champions,” Ketrak added. “In time.”

In time?
Odin thought.

How long would it take to convince an entire generation that being queer and loving a man was no di
fferent than being common and loving a woman?

No longer sure what to think of the conversation at hand, he retrieved his spoon from the corner of the plate, speared a piece of meat on the end of it, then shoved it into his mouth.

When the tone at the dining table once more fell to silence, Odin closed his eyes.

He would have started crying had Virgin not leaned over and planted a soft kiss on his cheek.

Odin lay awake what seemed like hours after the household had gone to bed staring at the ceiling and trying to gauge his situation. Virgin at his side, sleeping softly and with his breath on the back of his neck
, it seemed irrelevant to have such worrisome thoughts, especially in the arms of the man he cared about, but for some reason he couldn’t shake what Ournul had said earlier that day.

I would suggest, for your sake and mine, that you consider striking up an affair with one of the young noblewomen
who will be accompanying the caravan for the annual ball.

How easy was it to simply disregard one
’s life and change it into something someone considered ‘normal?’ Did it take one misplaced word, one falsely-judged action, one moment in time in which a situation could be shifted, altered,
controlled
before anyone had the chance to see it? It seemed in that very moment, while lying there in his lover’s arms, that one could alter just one thing without being obvious. A man could lie with another man but be in the company of a woman to make others assume that he was, indeed, common, and a man could tote around a child and make others believe that he was, in fact, the father. It need not matter whether or not he truly loved the woman or if the child was truly his—the appearance alone displayed a normalcy that most would rather have ingrained into their consciousness.

“People see what they want to see,” Odin whispered, curling his fingers around the quilt and forcing his eyes shut.

Or they
preferred
to see what they wanted to see.

If he and Virgin were to ever walk down the road hand-in-hand, it was quite possible that they
would be lynched. Stoning was by far out of the question, as such barbaric methods had been abandoned long ago, but would men, women and children willingly disobey the laws to destroy something they would rather not see?

Of course they would,
he thought.
If it’s not normal, it’s not right.

Virgin shifted behind him.

Odin scooted forward, away from his companion’s body.

The feeling
of warmth left almost immediately.

Was it always this cold,
he pondered,
when I wasn’t sleeping with another person?

He decided not to think about it.

Instead, he cast the blanket over his shoulders, threw his legs over the side of the bed, then strode across the room, directly to where the pack lay hanging on a rack embedded into the wall above a writing desk.

Inside, the book lay, content, peaceful
, and all the less aware of the world around it.

“Do I?” he whispered.

Rather than try and consider the probabilities of being caught by anyone other than his companion so late at night, Odin pulled the book from the pack, placed it on the writing desk, then reached for the single candle in the corner of the room, where he placed his thumb and forefinger around it and lit it with a single, magicked flame.

After checking one more time to make sure that Virgin had not
woken, Odin settled into the chair in front of the desk, traced the book’s worn edges, then opened it to the first page.

Lenna Arda,
he read.
The Book of the Dead.

In staring at the title page, ingrained with what appeared to be blood, Odin couldn
’t help but wonder whether or not he was ready to turn his attention toward the study of such ancient magic and the hazardous outcomes it would likely afflict on him. While he wasn’t necessarily worried about being cursed or tainted, given his Drow blood and the fact that he was, in essence, immune to such things, he did worry about the side effects.

I could go mad,
he thought.

Somehow, he managed to resist the urge to laugh.

If he weren’t mad now, then surely this book wouldn’t drive him any more insane.

Taking a moment to ponder over the title page, Odin sighed, took a deep breath, then scraped his teeth across his bottom lip before turning the page—to, what appeared to be, an index.

Raising the Dead,
the text halfway down the page said.

Odin took his finger and ran it along the individual Elven writings until he found what appeared to be
Blood and Flesh Summonings.

“Here goes nothing,” he whispered.

He fingered through the pages, taking note of the fact that they were not numbered but marked with lines, until he found the very passage which dictated the magic before him.

To raise the dead through blood and flesh,
the text began,
one must consider what it is he is willing to raise.

“A man,” he whispered.

Once more he trailed his fingers down the page until he found what appeared to be the definitions for human—or, at the very least, sentient—resurrection.

The dead may be revived either through t
heir original corpse or a false pretense created by the sacrifice of blood, hair or flesh. To revive the dead, one must consider the location in which they are going to perform the ceremony and how much time they have to dedicate themselves to the art of magic.

Where, Odin wondered, would he be able to have enough privacy to perform such an illegal act?

Is there a reference?
he wondered, thumbing back through the pages to the very beginning of the book.

At the index, scrawled in fine writing, ran a list of several definitions he found himself unable to pronounce—mainly Elvish words that bore no human translation and instead rang of song and art. He did, however, eventually come to
a section of designated areas in which the strongest concentrations of the Will ran through the world, including those that fell beyond the Elven borders and eventually translated the human lands.

Here it is,
he thought.

“This is where it all begins.”

He began to thumb through the pages.

The bed creaked.

Odin paused.

Every hair on his neck stood on end.

When no further movement ensued, he found himself able to continue.

Eventually, he came to the page where it was firmly marked by the twelfth slash that ran along the side of the gnarled, deckle-edged pages.

In scratchy, seemingly-rushed handwriting, a line read,
‘They are so shallow, marked and pure, but cannot be found without the cure.’